UK Legislation Scraper — Acts & SIs

Turn legislation.gov.uk into clean, section-level JSON — UK Acts and statutory instruments with title, year, number, type, enactment date and every section (number, heading, full text). The official site only serves CLML XML (no JSON endpoint); this actor parses it for you and emits one row per section or one row per document. Free, keyless.

Perfect for legal/compliance tooling, legislation search, RAG pipelines and regulatory datasets.

What you get

Per section (in oneRowPerSection mode) or per document (with a nested sections array):

• Document metadata — title, legislationType, documentMainType, year, number, status, enactmentDate, legislationUrl
• Section detail — sectionNumber, heading, sectionId, sectionUrl, and full text (when includeSectionText is on)

Handles all type codes — ukpga (Public General Act), uksi (Statutory Instrument), asp (Scottish Act), wsi, nia, ssi, ukla and more.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
type + year + number	—	—	A single document, e.g. ukpga / 2018 / 12
documents	array	—	List of "type/year/number" strings or full legislation.gov.uk URLs
includeSectionText	boolean	true	Include full section text (larger output)
oneRowPerSection	boolean	true	One row per section, or one per document with nested sections
maxSections	integer	0	Cap sections per document (0 = no cap)

Example input

{"documents":["ukpga/2018/12","uksi/2018/1189","asp/2021/1"]}

Single Act:

{"type":"ukpga","year":2018,"number":12}

Per-document mode:

{"type":"ukpga","year":1998,"number":29,"oneRowPerSection":false}

Output (one section)

Fields below are the real push shape in oneRowPerSection mode:

{
  "title": "Data Protection Act 2018",
  "legislationType": "ukpga",
  "documentMainType": "UnitedKingdomPublicGeneralAct",
  "year": 2018,
  "number": 12,
  "status": "final",
  "enactmentDate": "2018-05-23",
  "legislationUrl": "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2018/12",
  "sectionNumber": "1",
  "heading": "Overview",
  "sectionId": "section-1",
  "sectionUrl": "http://www.legislation.gov.uk/id/ukpga/2018/12/section/1",
  "text": "(1) This Act makes provision about the processing of personal data..."
}

In per-document mode you instead get one row per document: the metadata above plus sectionCount and a sections array of { sectionNumber, heading, id, url, text }.

Why this actor

• Parses CLML XML for you — the official source has no JSON; this walks the provision tree.
• Section-level granularity — one clean row per section, ideal for search and RAG.
• Batch + all types — many documents per run across every UK legislation type code.

Pricing

Pay per result — $4.00 per 1,000 results (one result = one section, or one document in per-document mode). No subscription or platform fees.

Related actors

• EU Tenders / TED Scraper — EU public procurement notices.
• Federal Register Scraper / eCFR Scraper — US government rules & regulations.
• SEC EDGAR Scraper — US public-company filings.

Notes & limits

• Missing metadata fields mean legislation.gov.uk did not provide them for that document.
• Section extraction follows the CLML provision structure; unusual documents may parse partially.
• Public official data; you are responsible for compliant use of the output.